EirGrid, Ireland’s electricity transmission system operator, was established in 2006 to take over the functions of the National Grid business unit of the country’s Electricity Supply Board (ESB). This move was deemed necessary following an EU directive compelling member states to split the power generation and power transmission functions into separate entities.
The establishment of EirGrid prompted the relocation of over 250 staff, a 24/7 control room and a busy data centre from ESB’s main offices in Dublin city centre. As a result, in 2008, EirGrid took up occupancy of a new 5,000m2 office building on Dublin’s southside.
The move necessitated a new National Control Centre display wall in order to monitor and manage the power system. Christie were successful in a competitive tendering process, having also supplied the previous display wall at the original premises.
“The major difference this time related to the dimensions of the control room,” said EirGrid’s Harry McAlinden who worked on the relocation project. “The technology had improved to SXGA+ and we were able to adopt a more widescreen approach to suit the smaller environment.”
Whereas the larger Fitzwilliam Street NOC had been serviced by 2 x 4 70in CS70-D100U Christie cubes, this time the new back-projection videowall display is based around 5 x 2 50" RPMSP-D120U cubes in true SXGA+ resolution, processed by a TVC-1100 wall controller. This provides a flat display resolution of 5120 x 1536 pixels.
The new projection modules are designed with a dual UHP™ lamp switcher system which provides both redundancy and long lamp life — two features essential for many mission critical control room applications. They also include automatic colour calibration and brightness control capability, built in edge-blending and factory-calibrated Comprehensive Color Adjustment (CCA™) for fast and easy colour set-up across tiled display walls, ultra-high contrast ratio of up to 2300:1 and brightness up to 1000 ANSI lumens.
The TVC-1100 wall manager contains advanced server architecture and Christie’s proprietary MASTERSuite™ wall management software, the industry’s only display wall management software available in eight languages.
The tender process involved pre-qualification questionnaires, from which three companies were short-listed. Developing the bid for Christie was their control room specialist David Griffiths.
“The tender evaluation process was thorough and assessed financial, technical, project planning and other criteria,” said Griffiths. “We were pleased that the EirGrid tender evaluation team judged Christie to have proposed the most satisfactory solution for their new control room.”
Christie’s project plan fitted closely with the demanding schedule for the relocation of EirGrid’s staff and IT facilities. “Christie were very professional with their project plan and were also able to demonstrate flexibility,” confirmed McAlinden.
Running the project for Christie was Carl Fowler — and three months after the order was placed the new system was ready to switch on. He said, “Having been involved with the original installation five years ago meant we already had a great working relationship with Harry [McAlinden] at EirGrid and Pierre [Valette] at INK Design [the control room designers]. This, coupled with thorough planning from all parties, meant that delivery and installation went completely to schedule.”
Aside from the improved signal quality and enhanced clarity and resolution, EirGrid were pleased with the mullion size (approx 1mm) giving them an almost seamless wall.
The widescreen geometric had been dictated by the room dimensions. The wall is split into different sections, the centre display showing the transmission network with graphical representation of stations and lines, along with various power flows and voltages. A variety of information is displayed on either side including a wind energy map, national electricity demand figures, frequency and the power flow on the inter-connector with Northern Ireland. The wall also displays two live camera feeds and there are additional inputs for TV and DVD line devices.
The wall has been built into its surround, which forms part of INK Design’s overall room concept, while the remainder of EirGrid’s AV fit-out in the building was specified under the guidance of Mark Johnson Consultants (MJC) of London.
In front of the five-metre wide media display wall are four desks — the front two permanently occupied and the back two used for training and commissioning. These desks are equipped with eight flat panel monitors each, providing access to EirGrid’s main control system, generator scheduling software and a variety of data extraction and reporting tools.
The immediate future will see EirGrid finalising the migration of remaining IT facilities from the old ESB location and running independently from the new offices, with the comfort of a parallel system at a remote backup site. In so doing, they will sever a link with a location in Dublin city centre that had housed the transmission system operation (and with it the National Control Centre) for more than 50 years.